Julia Wades in the Water was a member of  the Blackfeet Nation and became the first American Indian policewoman shortly after the turn of the 20th century. She served at the Blackfeet Agency in Montana for 25 years until her retirement in the 1930s. 

 Julia Wades in Water served her community managing the detention facility and assisting with female suspects. She sustained many warm friendships among the Blackfeet and the non-Native people of northern Montana.  This pioneering law enforcement woman was deeply invested in maintaining the values and safety of their community, and Blackfeet of that era remember all her contributions

Whether they are a part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs or work for a partner tribal agency, women today serve as uniformed police officers, agents/investigators, correction officers, administrators, dispatchers, support staff, analysts, supervisors and victim specialists all thanks to the groundbreaking work of Wades in the Water.

Reposted from Travel + Leisure

Following the battle of Dunkirk in 1940, as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill grew increasingly concerned about a Nazi invasion on U.K. soil, he ordered that precious works of art from London's National Gallery be evacuated.

After deciding that shipping the paintings to Canada would be too dangerous, politicians and museum authorities housed them instead in a variety of locations in northern Wales, including a disused slate mine. Now, a new exhibit at the National Gallery is exploring how the gargantuan rescue effort took place.

The exhibition, showcasing 24 archival photographs and a new video, shows visitors how the museum successfully hid its art for four years during World War II. It is set to run March 6–April 8.

“Hundreds of feet underground, the Manod slate mine is an extraordinary subterranean space in north Wales. Robin Friend’s photographs convey the wonder of this secret and labyrinthine world, where for four years during the Second World War, the National Gallery hid their collection for safe-keeping," National Gallery curator Minna Moore Ede told The Telegraph.

Museum workers evacuated hundreds of paintings from the London galleries and transported them to the Manod mine in 1940. The entrance to the cave was enlarged with explosives to allow easier transportation for the art, and curators built brick "bungalows" inside the mine to protect the paintings from the damp.

A number of paintings were also transported to the University of North Wales, the National Library of Wales, and three additional Welsh castles, according to the National Gallery website.

The entire collection was fully evacuated by the summer of 1941, the Irish Independent reported.

The British were not the only ones to hide art in caves and castles during WWII. French curators collected and hid art in caves and chateaux during the war, as curator Rose Valland documented the paintings and sculptures looted by the Nazis for retrieval after the war.

See Original Post

By Stevan P. Layne, CPP, CIPM, CIPI, Founding Director, IFCPP

I once asked a museum director if his institution did background screening on its volunteers. "Are you crazy," he replied. "If we did that, we wouldn't have any volunteers."   I'm not sure if that was an indication that none of them would pass the screen, or if none of them would submit to it.  

All of us recognize the many benefits a strong volunteer program brings to an institution. In many places, volunteers far outnumber paid staff. Without the work they provide, some programs could conceivably be lost. We forget, however, that volunteers are just "people." And people, given the right opportunity, steal. People, with the proper motivation, take advantage of other people - financially, physically, or even sexually. It logically follows, therefore, that any "people" brought into the workforce, regardless of whether or not they are compensated, should undergo a reasonable screening of their background and character. This is exactly the language used by the courts in examining cases of negligent hiring. We screen to protect the good people in the workforce, visitors, and other volunteers, from being subjected to or exposed to those who would take advantage of them, or cause harm.

The level of depth of the screening should be dependent on the applicant's exposure to people and access to assets. ALL applicants should undergo a thorough check for criminal histories. It should be asked on the application and verified by a records check. This may be done directly through the courts or through a professional background service.

If the applicant is serving to greet guests, has access to no keys, assets, or classes with minor children, then minimal screens may be performed. The information on the application needs to be verified. If a falsehood is discovered, the process is over and the application should be denied. This includes employment history, driving record, education, licenses or certifications held. Credit histories should be performed on all of those persons who will handle cash or accessioned artwork.

Everyone should be able to account for their time, for no less than the past ten years. You have to be somewhere - gainfully employed, in school, in the military, undergoing health care, or in prison. Some records must exist, somewhere, which verifies this existence. Women who were married and not employed should have access to tax records showing a joint return for the time period in question.

If volunteers are asked to perform certain tasks with special knowledge or education, they should be trained identically to paid employees who perform those tasks. The bottom line, volunteers are worth their weight in gold. Just be sure they're not taking the gold with them...

Reposted from Security Management

When most people think of Orlando, Florida, Walt Disney World Resort comes to mind. The world-renowned theme park makes Orlando the second most popular travel destination in the United States. But there is much more to the city than Mickey and Minnie Mouse. 

Beyond the complex infrastructure that supports Orlando’s 2.3 million citizens, the city is filled with parks and wildlife, the largest university in the country, and a vast hospitality industry that includes more than 118,000 hotel rooms. And International Drive, an 11-mile thoroughfare through the city, is home to attractions such as Universal Orlando Resort, SeaWorld Orlando, and the Orange County Convention Center, the site of ASIS International’s 62nd Annual Seminar and Exhibits this month. 

Hospitality goes hand-in-hand with security in Orlando, where local businesses and attractions see a constant flow of tourists from all over the world. And at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, which hosts events ranging from Broadway shows to concerts to community education and events, a new security director is changing the culture of theater to keep performers, staff, and visitors safe.​

The Living Room of the City

Open since November 2014, the Dr. Phillips Center spans two blocks and is home to a 2,700-seat main stage, a 300-seat theater, and the Dr. Phillips Center Florida Hospital School of the Arts. The building’s striking architecture, which includes a canopy roof, vast overhang, and a façade made almost entirely of glass, stretches across two blocks and is complemented by a front lawn and plaza.

After the June 11 shooting at Pulse nightclub less than two miles south of the theater, that lawn became the city’s memorial. Days after the shooting, the Dr. Phillips Center plaza, normally used for small concerts or events, hosted Orlando’s first public vigil. A makeshift memorial was established on the lawn, and dozens of mourners visited for weeks after the attack.

Chris Savard, a retired member of the Orlando Police Department, started as the center’s director of security in December, shortly after terrorists killed dozens and injured hundreds in attacks on soft targets in Paris. Prior to Savard, the center had no security director. Coming from a law enforcement background to the theater industry was a challenging transition, he says. 

“Before I came here, I was with an FBI terrorism task force,” Savard says. “Bringing those ideologies here to the performing arts world, it’s just a different culture. Saying ‘you will do security, this is the way it is’ doesn’t work. You have to ease into it.”

The Dr. Phillips Center was up and running for a year before Savard started, so he had to focus on strategic changes to improve security: “The building is already built, so we need to figure out what else we can do,” he says. One point of concern was an overhang above the valet line right at the main entrance. Situated above the overhang is a glass-walled private donor lounge, and Savard notes that anyone could have driven up to the main entrance under the overhang and set off a bomb, causing maximum damage. “It was a serious chokepoint,” he explains, “and the building was designed before ISIS took off, so there wasn’t much we could do about the overhang.”

Instead, he shifted the valet drop-off point, manned by off-duty police officers, further away from the building. “We’ve got some people saying, ‘Hey, I’m a donor and I don’t want to walk half a block to come to the building, I want to park my vehicle here, get out, and be in the air conditioning.’ It’s a tough process, but it’s a work in progress. Most people have not had an issue whatsoever in regards to what we’ve implemented.”

Savard also switched up the use of off-duty police officers in front of the Dr. Phillips Center. He notes that it can be costly to hire off-duty police officers, who were used for traffic control before he became the security director, so he reduced the number of officers used and stationed them closer to the building. He also uses a K-9 officer, who can quickly assess a stopped or abandoned vehicle on the spot. 

“When you pull into the facility, you see an Orlando Police Department K-9 officer SUV,” Savard explains. “We brought two other valet officers closer to the building, so in any given area you have at least four police cars or motorcycles that are readily available. We wanted to get them closer so it was more of a presence, a deterrent.” The exact drop-off location is constantly changing to keep people on their toes, he adds.

The Dr. Phillips Center was already using Andy Frain Services, which provides uniformed officers to patrol the center around the clock. Annette DuBose manages the contracted officers. 

When he started in December, Savard says he was surprised that no bag checks were conducted. When he brought up the possibility of doing bag checks, there was some initial pushback—it’s uncommon for theater centers to perform any type of bag check. “In the performing arts world, this was a big deal,” Savard says. “You have some high-dollar clientele coming in, and not a lot of people want to be inconvenienced like that.”

When Savard worked with DuBose and her officers to implement bag checks, he said everyone was astonished at what the officers were finding. “I was actually shocked at what people want to bring in,” Savard says. “Guns, knives, bullets. I’ve got 25-plus years of being in law enforcement, and seeing what people bring in…it’s a Carole King musical! Why are you bringing your pepper spray?”

Savard acknowledges that the fact that Florida allows concealed carry makes bag checks mandatory—and tricky. As a private entity, the Dr. Phillips Center can prohibit guns, but that doesn’t stop people from trying to bring them in, he notes. The Andy Frain officers have done a great job at kindly but firmly asking patrons to take their guns back to their cars, Savard says—and hav­ing a police officer nearby helps when it comes to argumentative visitors.​

Culture, Community, and Customer Service

There have been more than 300 performances since the Dr. Phillips Center opened, and with two stages, the plaza, classrooms, and event spaces, there can be five or six events going on at once. 

“This is definitely a soft target here in Orlando,” Savard notes. “With our planned expansion, we can have 5,000 people in here at one time. What a target—doing something in downtown Orlando to a performing arts center.”

The contract officers and off-duty police carry out the core of the security- related responsibilities, but Savard has also brought in volunteers to augment the security presence. As a nonprofit theater, the Dr. Phillips Center has a large number of “very passionate” volunteers—there are around 50 at each show, he says. 

The volunteers primarily provide customer service, but Savard says he wants them to have a security mindset, as well—“the more eyes, the better.” He teaches them basic behavioral assessment techniques and trends they should look for. 

“You know the guy touching his lower back, does he have a back brace on or is he trying to keep the gun in his waistband from showing?” Savard says. “Why is that person out there videotaping where people are being dropped off and parking their cars? Is it a bad guy who wants to do something?”

All 85 staffers at the Dr. Phillips Center have taken active shooter training classes, and self-defense classes are offered as well. Savard tries to stress situational awareness to all staff, whether they work in security or not. 

“One of the things I really want to do is get that active shooter mindset into this environment, because this is the type of environment where it’s going to happen,” Savard explains. “It’s all over the news.”

Once a month, Savard and six other theater security directors talk on the phone about the trends and threats they are seeing, as well as the challenges with integrating security into the performing arts world. 

“Nobody wanted the cops inside the building at all, because it looked too militant,” Savard says. “And then we had Paris, and things changed. With my background coming in, I said ‘Listen, people want to see the cops.’” 

Beyond the challenge of changing the culture at the Dr. Phillips Center, Savard says he hopes security can become a higher priority at performing arts centers across the country. The Dr. Phillips Center is one of more than two dozen theaters that host Broadway Across America shows, and Savard invited the organization’s leaders to attend an active shooter training at the facility last month. 

“There’s a culture in the performing arts that everything’s fine, and unfortu­nately we know there are bad people out there that want to do bad things to soft targets right now,” Savard says. “The whole idea is to be a little more vigilant in regards to protecting these soft targets.”

Savard says he hopes to make wanding another new norm at performing arts centers. There have already been a number of instances where a guest gets past security officers with a gun hidden under a baggy Cuban-style shirt. “I’ll hear that report of a gun in the building, and the hair stands up on the back of my neck,” Savard says. “It’s a never- ending goal to continue to get better and better every time. We’re not going to get it right every time, but hopefully the majority of the time.”

The Dr. Phillips Center is also moving forward with the construction of a new 1,700-seat acoustic theater, which will be completed within the next few years. The expansion allows the center to host three shows at one time—not including events in private rooms or on the plaza. Savard is already making plans for better video surveillance and increasing security staff once the new theater is built.

“We really try to make sure that everybody who comes into the building, whether or not they’re employed here, is a guest at the building, and we want to make sure that it’s a great experience, not only from the performance but their safety,” according to Savard. “It’s about keeping the bad guys out, but it’s also that you feel really safe once you’re in here.” 

See Original Post

Reposted from CNBC

Cyber threats represent the greatest danger to the international community today, Raytheon International CEO John Harris told CNBC Friday.

"(Cyber) is, I would, say one of largest and most important threats to our nation and to our allies," Harris said ahead of the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

"One of the challenges of cyber is that access to that technology is easy. So any number of individuals, both state and non-state actors, have the ability to make fundamental negative impacts to societies and to nations."

The major U.S. defense contractor and weapons manufacturer was one of several hundred senior executives and policymakers attending the summit, convened to discuss current and future security challenges.

"Hundreds of thousands of malware products are designed each and every day, and any number of people — state and non-state actors — have the ability to employ those systems," Harris said.

Research from software firm Symantec revealed that one in 131 emails contained malware in 2017, and that ransomware attacks increased 36 percent on the previous year.

"Our job is to make sure that we understand where they're coming from, make sure we design architectures that are resilient, and afford our customers the opportunity to defend."

Cyberattacks at both commercial and governmental levels are more of a threat than they've ever been before, and there are numbers to prove it. In 2016, the U.S. government spent $28 billion on cybersecurity. That's up from just $7.5 billion in 2007, and it's expected to increase in 2018.

And the shadowy perpetrators don't limit themselves in their targets — malware threats have increasingly made headlines as they manifest themselves across industrial sectors, governments, financial institutions and households. The last two years have tested relations between countries amid allegations of Russian election hacking in the U.S. and threats emanating from North Korea and China, among others.

Major recent cyber disruptions include high-profile attacks like the WannaCry virus, NotPetya and more recently hacks by cyber espionage group Fancy Bear, which is believed to have targeted U.S. defense contractors, national election networks and web infrastructure for the Winter Olympics. Raytheon was one of Fancy Bear's targets, along with competitors including Boeing, General Atomics and Lockheed Martin.

"Cyber is a core focus of our company, it is one of the fastest growing elements both in defense and commercial area," Harris said, describing record investments the company has made in the last 15 years into the area, both in organic capability and mergers and acquisitions.

"The more we are connected the more we are vulnerable," the CEO added. "We understand the vulnerabilities, we understand the threats, and devise systems and solutions that afford us an opportunity to protect our networks, protect our products and protect our customers."

See Original Post

Reposted from The New York Times

Four states in the Northeast with relatively strong gun laws banded together on Thursday to form a gun safety coalition, filling what the states called a vacuum of federal action by pledging to share registries of people prohibited from owning firearms in individual states.

The states — New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island, all of which have among the lowest rates of gun deaths per capita in the country — will directly share information like the names of people who have been deemed mentally unfit to own a gun, people who have a domestic violence restraining order against them and people who have a warrant out for their arrest. The states will also share details about how guns are trafficked and sold within their borders and designate universities that can collaborate on regional gun violence research, according to a memorandum of understanding signed by the states’ governors, all Democrats.

“This is a federal government that’s gone backwards on this issue,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said on a conference call with the other governors and reporters, outlining his dim hopes for new restrictions in the aftermath of the mass shooting in Florida. “President Trump has pledged allegiance to the N.R.A. and he’s delivered for them.”

Mr. Cuomo cited a proposal in Mr. Trump’s budget to cut funding to the federal background check system.

Some details about how the agreement will work in practice remain murky. The patchwork of state law means that states cannot necessarily restrict gun sales to everyone on another state’s no-gun list. And gun control advocates said states are already supposed to report to the national background check system people prohibited from owning guns under the parameters of state law, and not only those restricted by federal law.

But officials working on the coalition said the agreement would reinforce and expand what they share, including the names of people, for example, who have been voluntarily hospitalized for mental illness and are prohibited by some states from owning guns.

The agreement seemed poised to heighten the monitoring of people with mental illness, raising concerns among mental health advocates about unnecessarily stigmatizing people and discouraging them from seeking care. New York, for example, keeps a no-guns database that has grown to 77,447 names of people whom mental health professionals have reported as being a danger to themselves or others.

New York will now share that database with the other three states, Alphonso David, Mr. Cuomo’s chief counsel, said in an interview. It is not clear how the other states would act on it, given that the law in Connecticut and New Jersey, for example, expressly forbids firearm purchases only by people who have been committed to a mental health center.

But some states give their licensing authorities discretion to ban people they deem a risk to public safety, and Mr. David said they could use New York’s database as an investigative tool to make their own determination.

Sam Tsemberis, a former director of New York City’s involuntary hospitalization program for homeless and dangerous people, and now the chief executive of Pathways Housing First, which provides housing to the mentally ill, said that for people already vulnerable to feeling isolated and marginalized, putting so many of them on a list and then giving other states more medical information about them “is only going to exacerbate that condition.”

The vast majority of people with mental illnesses are not violent and there is scant information about how effective such databases have been. Mr. David said he did not know how many guns have been seized on the basis of New York’s list.

States will also share information about people with orders of protection against them, Mr. David said. All four states in the coalition, to varying degrees, use protective orders as a basis for restricting gun sales.

The states will also share the findings of law enforcement agencies about where illegal guns came from and how they are transported to the Northeast. Gun trafficking groups have often been found to buy guns, particularly handguns, in states south of New York along the Interstate 95 corridor, nicknamed the Iron Pipeline, and then drive them to the Northeast.

“It will help identify trafficking patterns,” said Elizabeth Avore, the legal and policy director at Everytown for Gun Safety, calling the coalition the most comprehensive she knew of. “It would be great to see states up and down the Iron Pipeline sharing information.”

See Original Post

Reposted from the Huffington Post

Some people’s idea of justice is an eye for an eye, but China wants “severe punishment” for a man who stole a clay thumb.

Michael Rohana, 24, was charged last week for allegedly breaking a thumb off the left hand of a 2,000-year-old terra-cotta warrior on display at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. The incident is said to have occurred in December while he attended the museum’s ugly Christmas sweater party.

The FBI said Rohana snuck away from the party and used a cellular telephone as a flashlight to look at exhibits that were displayed in a closed-off showroom.

At one point, he stepped up onto a platform supporting one of the statues on display and took a selfie, according to China’s Xinhua News Agency. 

Security cameras show Rohana putting his hand on the left hand of the statue, and then appearing to break something off from its left hand and put it in his pocket before leaving the room, according to an arrest affidavit.

The museum-goer allegedly took the clay digit to his home in Bear, Delaware, as a souvenir. He is now accused of theft of an artwork from a museum, concealment of the artwork and interstate transportation of stolen property, according to The New York Times.

The statues featured in the Franklin’s “Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor” exhibit are some of thousands discovered in China’s Xi’an city in 1974 by a group of farmers, according to the BBC. They are considered one of China’s most important archaeological finds.

The vandalized statue is worth quite a thumb, er, sum: $4.5 million.

The broken-off thumb wasn’t reported missing until Jan. 8, at which point the FBI’s Art Crime Team was contacted. The agency used the video as well as credit card information from the party to finger Rohana as the thumb thief.

Rohana allegedly attended the party with five friends, one of whom told investigators she heard the suspect mention the thumb on the ride home, according to USA Today.

Another friend said Rohana posted a photo of “a finger” from a terra-cotta warrior on Snapchat a day after the party.

Investigators interviewed Rohana on Jan. 13 and asked if he had anything in his possession that he wanted to turn over to the FBI. That’s when Rohana allegedly took an agent to his bedroom and grabbed the terra-cotta thumb from a drawer in a desk.

The Franklin Museum has apologized for the incident. An official from the Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Centre, the agency that arranged for the loan of the statues, seeks a “severe penalty” for the perpetrator, according to the South China Morning Post.

“The terracotta warriors are national treasures of our country,” an unnamed official told the paper. “Their historical and artistic value are impossible to value … We express strong resentment and condemnation towards this theft and the destruction of our heritage.”

Franklin Institute spokeswoman Stefanie Santo told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the warrior and its thumb will be repaired. She blames the incident on a contractor who did not follow security protocols the night of the theft.

Rohana is currently out on bail.

See Original Post

Reposted from The Guardian

Wanton proliferation of artificial intelligence technologies could enable new forms of cyber-crime, political disruption and even physical attacks within five years, a group of 26 experts from around the world have warned.

In a new report, the academic, industry and the charitable sector experts, describe AI as a “dual use technology” with potential military and civilian uses, akin to nuclear power, explosives and hacking tools.

“As AI capabilities become more powerful and widespread, we expect the growing use of AI systems to lead to the expansion of existing threats, the introduction of new threats and a change to the typical character of threats,” the report says.

They argue that researchers need to consider potential misuse of AI far earlier in the course of their studies than they do at present, and work to create appropriate regulatory frameworks to prevent malicious uses of AI.

If the advice is not followed, the report warns, AI is likely to revolutionise the power of bad actors to threaten everyday life. In the digital sphere, they say, AI could be used to lower the barrier to entry for carrying out damaging hacking attacks. The technology could automate the discovery of critical software bugs or rapidly select potential victims for financial crime. It could even be used to abuse Facebook-style algorithmic profiling to create “social engineering” attacks designed to maximise the likelihood that a user will click on a malicious link or download an infected attachment.

The increasing influence of AI on the physical world means it is also vulnerable to AI misuse. The most widely discussed example involves weaponizing “drone swarms”, fitting them with small explosives and self-driving technology and then setting them loose to carry out untraceable assassinations as so-called “slaughterbots”.

Political disruption is just as plausible, the report argues. Nation states may decide to use automated surveillance platforms to suppress dissent – as is already the case in China, particularly for the Uighur people in the nation’s northwest. Others may create “automated, hyper-personalized disinformation campaigns”, targeting every individual voter with a distinct set of lies designed to influence their behavior. Or AI could simply run “denial-of-information attacks”, generating so many convincing fake news stories that legitimate information becomes almost impossible to discern from the noise.

Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh of the University of Cambridge’s centre for the study of existential risk, one of the report’s authors, said: “We live in a world that could become fraught with day-to-day hazards from the misuse of AI and we need to take ownership of the problems – because the risks are real. There are choices that we need to make now, and our report is a call-to-action for governments, institutions and individuals across the globe.

“For many decades hype outstripped fact in terms of AI and machine learning. No longer. This report … suggests broad approaches that might help: for example, how to design software and hardware to make it less hackable – and what type of laws and international regulations might work in tandem with this.”

Not everyone is convinced that AI poses such a risk, however. Dmitri Alperovitch, the co-founder of information security firm CrowdStrike, said: “I am not of the view that the sky is going to come down and the earth open up.

“There are going to be improvements on both sides; this is an ongoing arms race. AI is going to be extremely beneficial, and already is, to the field of cybersecurity. It’s also going to be beneficial to criminals. It remains to be seen which side is going to benefit from it more.

“My prediction is it’s going to be more beneficial to the defensive side, because where AI shines is in massive data collection, which applies more to the defence than offence.”

The report concedes that AI is the best defence against AI, but argues that “AI-based defence is not a panacea, especially when we look beyond the digital domain”.

“More work should also be done in understanding the right balance of openness in AI, developing improved technical measures for formally verifying the robustness of systems, and ensuring that policy frameworks developed in a less AI-infused world adapt to the new world we are creating,” the authors wrote.

See Original Post

Reposted from The Telegraph

The Year of the Dog may be approaching, but on a recent Monday at the Palace Museum in Beijing it seemed to already be here. However, the chorus of 23 barking dogs that erupted as a stranger stepped into the museum’s kennel did not sound like a Lunar New Year celebration or a warm welcome.

These dogs help guard a huge hoard of national treasures every night. The museum, the country’s imperial palace from 1421 until the fall of the Chinese monarchy in 1911, houses as many as 1.86 million cultural relics. The collection of this single museum accounts for 42 per cent of the whole country’s registered national-level precious cultural relics.

Chang Fumao, 59, heads the five-person canine patrol squad. His office, also his bedroom, is hidden near the western gate of the palace complex. Before nightfall, visitors and the rest of the museum staff leave. Mr Chang and his colleagues are most familiar with the shadowy face of the ancient complex, where they are on duty from dusk to dawn.

Mr Chang started work helping monitor the museum when he was 20. In the 1980s the human guards had the help of only sound detectors in the exhibition halls. When something abnormal was heard they would rush to the scene in case there was a burglar.

Chasing and biting abilities are among the most valued characteristics of the dogs because they learn that the burglar is the top enemyChang Fumao, canine patrol squad head

“Sometimes I felt terrified checking the empty and dark palaces alone,” Mr Chang said. “There are many folk legends about supernatural phenomena, like ghosts, in the Forbidden City at night.”

A guard dog was a welcome addition. A German shepherd named Tiger became his friend for night patrol. “I’ve loved raising dogs since I was very young,” he said. “Tiger also gave me courage at first.”

But there was a ban on large dogs in downtown Beijing at that time, and the museum was no exception. Tiger was sent to the countryside. Shortly after that, a burglar sneaked into the palace. “My colleagues were very close to catching the burglar,” Mr Chang said. “They watched him climb over the wall.”

Mr Chang suggested organising a canine patrol squad at the museum and, in 1987, dogs came back. Mr Chang became not only a dog trainer but also headmaster of a puppy care centre.

He chose four-month-old puppies, most selected from the countryside or police stations, and began to train his young wards. “That’s how you can find each dog’s talent,” he said.

“Some are particularly good at fetching a ball from a long distance. That means they are good at tracking. Some have the keenest sense of smell, and some of the more energetic ones like biting things.”

We have chubby cats all over the palace but dogs are the unseen animal heroesShan Jixiang, museum director

When each dog is a year old it is given a tailored training course. Most start their career as guard dogs after three months’ intense training. “Chasing and biting abilities are among the most valued characteristics of the dogs because they learn that the burglar is the top enemy,” Mr Chang said.

At 4:30am, Mr Chang rises to give the dogs their morning practice. The entire Forbidden City is their training ground. They must finish before 7am, when some other museum employees start work.

After 5:30pm, when the palace gates are closed, more training begins as the dogs warm up for their night-time shifts. It is a separate world that many museum employees, let alone visitors, do not realise exists.

The Forbidden City is the world’s most visited museum – it had about 16.7 million visits last year – and it is not always easy to make sure everyone obeys the rules.

The museum also is immense, at 860,000sq yd. The dogs occasionally find people who have hidden in the museum at night, but the rule-breakers are generally released without charge if they have not stolen or broken anything.

“If I caught a burglar, I would become really well-known,” Mr Chang said. “However, at least we have prevented potential accidents and saved national treasures from being damaged. That’s the most important thing, right?”

People get sleepy, and machines sometimes malfunction. But the dogs are alert even when they are sleeping. They are the most reliable line of defenceChang Fumao, canine patrol squad head

In 2011, in the museum’s most recent theft, a burglar stole seven pieces of historic treasure from a temporary jewellery exhibition. He was later caught and all the lost items were recovered. Now a guard dog is assigned to every courtyard with a temporary exhibition to keep an even closer eye on exhibits.

The museum also has a video surveillance system that leaves no angles unseen, said Shan Jixiang, the museum’s director. “We now have a comprehensive security system combining people, dogs and machines. We have chubby cats all over the palace but dogs are the unseen animal heroes.”

Mr Chang praised the dogs as well. “People get sleepy, and machines sometimes malfunction. But the dogs are alert even when they are sleeping. They are the most reliable line of defence.” When and where patrols pass remain top-secret.

Guard dogs for the former imperial palace retire when they are seven years old, when it is possible they may be “unable to catch up with a young person in their 20s at full speed”, Mr Chang said. They spend their last years at the museum, and a few now among the group are retirees.

Mr Chang will retire next year, and worries that few young people will be willing to take his place, but the other four humans in the squad are younger than Mr Chang.

“This job is about being bitten,” Mr Chang said. “It’s common in training to get hurt by mistake. I cannot remember how many rabies vaccines I’ve had. But I love dogs and have raised dogs all my life, which is good enough.”

See Original Post

Reposted from Artsy

Art storage facilities charged with the preservation of paintings, sculptures, and other cultural works share a mandate that is in some ways similar to that of Norway’s seed vault. That underground bunker houses a collection of food crop seeds, stored to restart the world’s agriculture after a “doomsday” scenario. But the vault, which faced flooding following the unexpected melting of permafrost last year, is itself already feeling the effects of climate change.

Though not quite as necessary (or edible) as food, art sustains humanity in an important way. And art storage facilities are also dealing with the threat of climate change. As stewards of artwork, cutting-edge storage facilities actively work to address the increased temperature shifts, severe storms, and erratic weather that are all part of climate change projections.

In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy barreled into New York, causing widespread flooding in Chelsea and at the art storage facility Christie’s maintains in Brooklyn. Since then, the storm has become a frequent frame of reference for New York art collectors, now keenly aware of the city’s vulnerability to flooding. “If they don’t [mention Sandy], their insurers do,” says Kevin Lay, the director of operations at ARCIS, a soon-to-open Harlem storage facility.  

That has storage facilities eager to boast about how the work inside is safe from natural disasters. As a result of the hurricane, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) revised its flood and surge zones for the city of New York. Some storage facilities now openly advertise how far they are outside of these zones as a way to drum up business.

“Of course hurricanes are number one on everybody’s list, both in New York and in Florida,” says John Jacobs, CEO and President of Artex Fine Art Services, which operates storage facilities in New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, Fort Lauderdale, and Los Angeles. “The awareness of the potential for flooding from hurricanes is much greater than it has been in both New York and Miami,” he noted. It’s no wonder: Three out of five of the nation’s costliest hurricanes occurred in the last 10 years.

The basic blueprint of all Artex’s facilities are similar in terms of environmental controls such as humidity, cooling and backup generator capacity. Jacobs works with AXA ART Insurance Group’s Global Risk Assessment Platform (GRASP) to evaluate his facilities with over 2,000 industry standard questions ranging from the design of the building to institutional policies and workplace conditions. Jacobs says that GRASP is especially thorough, because it recognizes the crucial role employees play in disaster mitigation: “It’s one thing to have a fancy facility, but does your staff have the right training to handle art property either routinely or in an emergency?” he asks.

Regional climate affects the facilities’ placement. This explains the choice of inland Fort Lauderdale over art hub Miami and Artex’s 2013 move from Chelsea to Long Island City, 55 feet above sea level.

Fires also pose a threat to art collections. While it is difficult to link any single fire to climate change, “scientists have found that human-caused climate change is increasing the frequency and size of wildfires for much of the United States,” Vox recently reported. In early December, lovers of the J. Paul Getty Museum white-knuckled through the Los Angeles wildfire that raged not far from the museum (though a major freeway provided a firebreak that the fire never crossed). But robust fire protections built into the museum and the surrounding landscape led officials to insist that “the safest place for the collection to be is right here at the Getty Center,” as a spokesperson told Artsy at the time.  

Even when the art stored in museums and secure facilities is safe from disaster, art storage facilities are increasingly being called on to evacuate vulnerable work from collectors’ homes to safer harbor. This has them operating in some hazardous conditions. Elsewhere in the Los Angeles area, Artex kicked into gear to evacuate art from clients’ homes threatened by the fire.  

“We had a number of private collectors calling us, and that was a situation where things were happening so rapidly that it was very difficult to respond,” says Jacobs. “We had crews in pulling things out literally minutes before the houses caught on fire. And we were able to save a fair amount but you have to balance the risk to the staff and people and equipment.” Artex also evacuated art from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. “As soon as the national guard would let us in, they brought us in with armed escorts to start pulling things out,” Jacobs says.

Art storage facility UOVO, with its flagship in Long Island City, has also been called to evacuate art on short notice due to fire and floods. “On numerous occasions, we’ve received calls, literally on weekends even—Saturday and Sunday morning—from people’s offices, homes, and smaller-sized museums because someone saw a leak or a fire occurred, and they need a safe storage alternative immediately,” says executive vice president Clifford Davis.

Generally, the best disaster strategy is to keep art in storage facilities, where it is safe and sound behind layers of climate protection. The soon-to-open ARCIS building has 100 percent mechanical redundancy, meaning it has two HVAC systems and atomizers (which control humidity). The generator runs on natural gas, rather than diesel. “In the event of some natural disaster, we don’t have to run a diesel generator,” says Lay, “Good luck getting that diesel delivery when everyone else is trying to do the same thing.” UOVO has two onsite backup generators, and can run autonomously for two weeks, says Davis.

“We joke that if you see us moving artwork out of that building in an emergency circumstance something has gone very, very wrong in New York City,” says Lay.

While the climate protections built into major high-profile public museums like the Getty and the Whitney receive a great deal of press attention, the risk mitigation strategies employed by private storage facilities are similar, and increasingly interrelated. Artex, ARCIS and UOVO all function as supplementary storage for major museum collections. Jacobs estimates that 70 percent of his business is museum-oriented. Consequently, the facilities are purpose-built to museum-quality standards.

Adrian Tuluca, a senior principal with the architectural consulting firm Vidaris, conducted thermal analysis on ARCIS shortly after performing the same process for the new Whitney Museum building. Tuluca used computational fluid dynamics modeling (CFD) to determine how to stop condensation—which could lead to mold—from forming within the walls of the facility should temperatures outside drop to 20, 11, or four degrees Fahrenheit. He’s also done this same analysis for Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s upcoming Hudson Yards arts facility and the Shed, which required writing custom code to address the building’s unique movable shell.

As they look to the future, those tasked with safeguarding culture from natural disasters are thinking broadly about the threats posed to artwork. “In this time of changing climate, anything’s possible,” says Jacobs. He talks to art museums around the country about their plans in case of a disaster—whether a major storm, or a terrorist attack. In the world of insurance, the legal umbrella of force majeure, or unpreventable circumstances, includes both “acts of god” (such as a hurricane) and “acts of man” (such as a riot). We may look at the looting of Palmyra and the flooding of Miami as separate events, but the effects of climate change do have a direct impact on human action. The nonprofit Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE), gives multiple examples of cultural artifacts being looted in the wake of environmental disaster. No one tasked with running art storage facilities believes in taking a passive approach to the external threats posed to the work inside.

“Taking care of cultural property is my religion,” says Lay. “I would almost rather die than let something happen to an artwork.”

See Original Post